Ms Bolanle Onugoruwa was removed from office as the Director-General of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) because of her poor working relationship with the Vice President Namadi Sambo, THE CITIZEN can authoritatively report.
BPE is the secretariat of the National Council on Privatisation (NCP), which is charged with the responsibility of steering the privatization ship. Sambo is the chairman of NCP, which meets monthly to ratify the actions and proposals of the secretariat.
According to reliable source, who is a BPE insider, her trouble was largely poor relationship building and management.
He said, “You may hear different reasons, but the truth is that the (former) Director General was unable to establish a good working relationship with Sambo on one hand and even the Chairman of the Technical Committee on Privatisation on the other.
“They expected to be briefed regularly on the activities of the BPE, but that was not the case. She carried on most of the times without reference to the NCP. The result was that when she got into different troubles, like the Manitoba Hydro Electric contract, she had no strong voice behind her.
“Her handling of the Manitoba case left much to be desired. Her handling of the labour issues with PHCN and the prequalification and verification of bids for the power companies especially those involving former Power Minister Prof. Barth. Nnaji were unsatisfactory to Sambo and the Technical Committee Chairman, Atedo Peterside.”
Another source at the BPE told THE CITIZEN that since she became the Director General of the BPE, privatization activities were at the lowest ebb. Except for the PHCN transactions which process goes back to the period of Nasir El-Rufai, not much happened under her watch?
He said, “It is the personality and office of the Director General that drive privatization. You need to be creative and capable of thinking outside the box. You should be ready for oppositions, but let your plans and actions be unimpeachable.
“Even for those of us here in the secretariat the inactivity of the Bureau under her was loud. She was more interested in clinging to that position and in protecting her position she left her main mandate – driving the privation process – to suffer.”
Besides pressure from Senate asking for her sack after inquries into the activities of the privatization agency going back to 1999.
The Senate ad-hoc committee that investigated the privatisation and commercialisation of public companies between 1999 and 2011 had last year recommended her immediate sack from office.
She was accused of “gross incompetence in the management of the BPE” as well as the “illegal and fraudulent sale of the five per cent Federal Government’s shares in the Eleme Petrochemical Company Limited, EPCL.”
Yet another source stated that Federal Government has been looking for an opportunity to sack her since the Senate passed a Resolution, asking the President to sack her, adding that the issue of Manitoba offered the much desired opportunity FG has been waiting for to discharge her.
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Source: The Citizen
